Telephony Providers

A Telephony Provider (TP) is a telephone system that can be used by the Evatel service platform to send and receive telephone calls.  TP systems can be the SIP Gateway of an Internet telephony service provider (ITSP) or the PBX of a company. Evatel requires a valid TP to make and answer calls. As the System Administrator, you must define each TP to be used by Evatel. Enter only TPs that have been successfully tested for inbound and/or outbound SIP telephony calls. Go to System Integration - Call Routing Setup for more information on how to configure the interconnection and call routing between Evatel and the telephony provider. When a user wants to make a call, Evatel contacts the user's pre-defined TP for that type of call as defined in the user's call permissions (Go to Call Permissions for more). By default, Evatel uses the user's company TP which is usually the company PBX. Most IP telephony providers require authentication before authorizing a user to make a call on their network. Evatel supports Peer-to-Peer and User authentication methods. It is important to note that all outbound calls made by Evatel go through the appropriate telephony providers. Outbound calls include calls to external telephone numbers (local and long distance) as well as calls to extensions on IP-PBXs for company accounts. Note also that Evatel accepts any ITSP provider to forward inbound calls to its registered users, companies and services.

To access the Telephony Providers management section, click on the Telephony Providers  button in the System Admin toolbar. The Telephony Providers page opens listing the known telephony providers on the system. In this section, you can perform functions such as add new telephony providers, view and edit the properties of existing telephony providers, and remove telephony providers.

The Telephony Providers page provides the following information organized in columns for each telephony provider:

• Name: the IP telephony provider name.
• SIP Address: the SIP address used by Evatel to communicate with the telephony provider in order to forward outgoing calls.
• SIP Host Name: the name of the host returned when resolving the SIP address.
• Public Use: Check box indicating that the telephony provider is a Public Switch (i.e. not a private Company PBX)
• Remove: the Remove link to remove the telephony provider from the known telephony providers list.

Click on Next or Previous to browse  through the list of providers.

You can sort the list of telephony providers by Provider Name, SIP Address or SIP Host Name as follows:

• Click on the column title Provider Name to display the list of telephony providers sorted by name.
• Click on the column title SIP Address to sort the list of telephony providers by SIP address.
• Click on the column title SIP Host Name to display the list of telephony providers sorted by their SIP host name.

Click on the column title again to reverse the sorting order. Click on Next or Previous to browse  through the list of telephony providers.

As a system administrator, you can add new telephony providers from the Telephony Providers  page as follows:

• Click the Add New Telephony Provider button on the Telephony Providers  page.

A Telephony Provider information window opens displaying a form to fill for the new telephony provider. Fill in this form as follows:

• Name Enter a name for the new telephony provider to add. The name is used for reference only. Ex: Worldlink IP Network.
• SIPAddress Enter the IP address used to forward calls to the telephony provider. The SIP address can be the Host name or the SIP numeric address. For example, 192.168.12.229 and assistant.Evatel.com are both valid SIP addresses.
• Use Type Select the Use Type to specify what the gateway is used for:
  • Public Switch: select this type if the TP is a public switch used to offer VoIP services and charge for them. Evatel bills users for calls that go through this type of TP. Once added, a public switch can't be removed.
  • Company PBX: select this type if the TP is used as a company IP-PBX with internal extensions. Evatel does not charge for calls made on this type of TP. The company hosting the TP handles any billing or charges if any.
• Company Name: Select the company account for which this TP (IP-PBX) is reserved.
  Note that TPs in this category (Use Type set to Company PBX) are reserved for their company. They are not listed with other TPs defined as Public Switch type.

• Authentication Method Some TPs require authentication before allowing calls to go through. Select the appropriate authentication settings for the new TP:
  1. None: select this option if the TP does not require any authentication.
  2. Peer: select this option if the TP uses Peer-to-Peer authentication to authorize calls coming from Evatel. This method establishes a Trusted Peer relationship between the TP and Evatel. All calls made by Evatel through this TP are automatically authorized by the TP. Evatel logs call details to bill users and companies for these calls (Go to Billing Data Export for more details on billing options). There are two Peer-to-Peer Authentication methods supported:
     • IP Address: select this option if the TP uses the IP address of the Evatel for authentication
     • Account Name & Password: select this option if the TP requires a user name and password for authentication. This information is provided to you by the TP administrator:
       • User Name: Enter the account user name
       • Password: Enter the account password
  3. User: select this option if the TP requires each user to be authenticated individually. Go to User Settings to learn how to specify the user's SIP authentication credentials. This authentication method is recommended for TPs that bill calls directly to users who are also TP subscribers.
• Click Submit to add the new telephony provider to the list of known TPs, or Cancel to close the window without adding the telephony provider.

You can modify the information about any known telephony provider from the Telephony Providers  page as follows:

• Click on the telephony provider Name to open its properties window.
• Make the desired changes simply by overwriting the existing information.
• Click Submit to save the modifications, or Cancel to close the window without saving the changes.

Some telephony providers may change the parameters to access their systems and communicate using their network. They may also change their rates or stop covering the type of calls that interest you. These are some of the situations for which you may decide to route your calls using different routes. You can only remove private telephony providers that of Company PBX Type.  In other words, telephony providers of Public Switch Type cannot be removed.

Click the Remove link corresponding to the telephony provider you want to delete. Click OK to confirm the removal of the provider from the system, or Cancel to close the window without removing the provider.